AOL to Begin Using DKIMhttp://blog.deliverability.com/2008/11/aol-to-begin-us.htmlhttp://blog.wordtothewise.com/2008/11/aol-and-dkim/AOL announced its plans to begin DKIM verification sometime this next year during an ESPC call moderated by Ben Isaacson of CheetahMail with special guest Mike Adkins from AOL. DKIM is the next generation of DomainKeys, an encryption based authentication method, which is picking up adoption in the receiver community. Currently, AOL uses an IP based reputation algorithm to determine the propensity of outbound mail to be spam. Under the new paradigm, a sender’s domain will be verified against the DKIM signature with inbox success being determined by that domain’s reputation. Mike proposed that by the end of the first half of 2009 an initial version checking the signature will be in place. As part of this, AOL has deployed an address where any sender can check the validity of a DKIM signature against the AOL DKIM implementation. To check a signature, send an email to any address at dkimtest.aol.com. It was also mentioned that SPF will be actively used as another data point providing information about a sender, whereas now SPF is checked but not used in the reputation algorithm.